Revival of a Swedish taboo

STOCKHOLM — Every country’s response to the European refugee crisis has a specific flavor — one infused with its own national experience. Germany’s response has cast a shadow over much of the rest of the EU. Its actions have been a vigorous reassertion of a passion to reject its own past, and have stood in stark contrast to reactions elsewhere.

Political opinion in the rest of Europe is less clear cut. Even in Sweden, which led Europe last year in the number of successful asylum seekers relative to its population, fear of “the other” is growing. Polling suggests the anti-immigration Sweden Democrats (SD) are eating into the century-old, center-left consensus: Surveys have put the SD’s support at 25 percent, up from 13 percent in last year’s general election — a stunning showing for a country with proportional representation. By comparison, the same survey put the Social Democrats, who have been in government since 1917, at 23 percent, and the Moderates at 21 percent.

The Sweden Democrats placed a provocative advert on the walls of the Stockholm metro last month. Written in English and ostensibly directed at tourists — although the SD’s target voters all speak Swedish — it began: “Sorry about the mess here in Sweden. We have a serious problem with forced begging.” The advert got a rather un-Swedish response from its political opponents, who tore it down.

To non-Swedes, the ad was slightly mysterious. What is this “forced begging” exactly, we murmured, and why is it a serious problem? It’s hard to discern evidence of the alleged problem in Stockholm and the surrounding area. But ask a Swede and it becomes clear that the ad contained a subliminal message.

An advert by the Sweden Democrats at Ostermalmstorg subway station in Stockholm| EPA/BERTI ERICSSON/TT SWEDEN OUT

“Everyone knows this advert was directed against Romanians,” said Kim Persson, 23, a flute player and member of Tunnelbaneorkestern, a Stockholm band that includes three Romanians musicians. “There has recently been a national conversation about visible foreign beggars — which is a comparatively new thing. And they are nearly all Romanian.”

In the public narrative of “forced begging,” it is generally understood that there is a criminal organization of foreign migrants who intend to somehow defraud the Swedish people: It is the most negative possible interpretation of the observable phenomenon of Roma beggars —­ not just in Sweden but all over Europe. Indeed, even well-meaning folkies — I was visiting the Stockholm folk festival — patiently explained to me that expensive cars drop many Roma off to beg outside Swedish shops only to be picked up again at the end of the day. “But how do you know this?” I asked, only to be told: “Everyone knows this.”

Fortunately, the Rockwool Foundation, a Danish think tank, conducted robust research on “forced begging” in Nordic countries. Its report, “When Poverty Meets Affluence,” found that to the extent recent arrivals from Romania were begging — which is not illegal in Sweden — “there is no indication of the presence of traffickers or organizers outside the close family who manipulate people into traveling, and who take a cut of their incomes. [Roma beggars] are definitely poor, they are not organized by traffickers, the money is sorely needed and spent on necessities, and criminal activities are not closely associated with begging.”

So how is it possible that the SD’s racist narrative, whose only foundation is hearsay, got plastered on the walls of the metro in a society hailed as one of the most tolerant in the world? Surely there are anti-discrimination laws to prevent this kind of thing?

It turns out there aren’t.

* * *

When I rang the organizations involved — the metro, Sweden’s office of the chancellor of justice, and the Stockholm county government, which funds the metro — each thought advertising regulation on the metro was someone else’s responsibility. Rather than talking about anti-hate legislation — as I was expecting — each organization cited freedom of speech and argued that political advertising is less strictly regulated than other types of advertising in Sweden. Moreover, the chancellor’s department decided in August that the SD’s claims about “forced begging” were too vague to be a construed as a racial slur on any particular group — even though Swedes knew differently. To cast out any doubt, Claes Wersall, press secretary for the Moderates in Stockholm’s local government, said: “We do not see it as our job to regulate freedom of speech.”

On January, 1, 2011 Sweden abolished the word “race” from its legal lexicon, saying that the law “assumes all people belong to the human race.” The stated reasoning behind the change is that the idea of “race” has no scientific basis. But in a country where anti-immigrant sentiment is on the rise, to some the decision seems perverse. How is it possible have an honest discussion about anti-immigration politics without talking about race?

According to Professor Irene Molina of Uppsala University, the history of her own educational institution has a great deal to do with this contortion of Sweden’s public discourse.

“Uppsala opened a center for racial biological studies in 1922,” she said. “It was the first in the world of its kind, although eugenics rapidly became popular, especially in Nazi Germany. Since the war this institution and the ideas that it represented have become a source of great national shame and the official attitude was to put a lock on it and not talk about racism any more, hoping that it would disappear from society. You will probably find this very hard to believe but only at the last election did a party leader vow to fight racism for the first time [unlike “race” this word is not banned]. But it had never before been mentioned in public.” The recent decision to remove the term “race” from the public discourse was a response to Sweden’s pseudo-scientific legacy, she said.

“Sweden has never dealt adequately with [its entrenched racism] against the Sami people” — Josefina Skerk, vice-president of the Sami parliament.

“There were such institutes in other countries. But the unique thing in Sweden’s case is that the institute represented a kind of political consensus. Every political party supported it at the time: The ideas it embodied represented national thinking. It closed after World War II but the teachers and professors went on giving lectures and promoting their racist theories about the superiority of the Nordic people long after. The institute closed but it didn’t mean that the ideology ended in any way. The last racist lecture was given in Uppsala in the 1970s, to many people who are still working now. There is a generation of Swedes who still have this going on in their heads.”

In practice the decision to remove the word “race” from public discourse betrayed a “a lack of public knowledge about how racism works,” Professor Molina continued. “Racism is a social construct as much as a pseudo-scientific one and so there are a large number of people in Sweden who, when you take the word ‘race’ away, are left without any legal protection from discrimination.”

Professor Molina is far from alone in this belief. A U.N. report on racism in Sweden published last month noted: “The Swedish philosophy of equality and its public and self-image as a country with respect for human rights, non-discrimination and liberal democracy, blinds it to the structural racism … in its midst. No country is free of racism, and Sweden is not an exception. [The authors of this report recommend] that the government reconsider the omission of ‘race’ from the Discrimination Act.”

* * *

The U.N. report came at the right time.

Josefina Skerk, vice-president of the Sami parliament — the government of the indigenous people from the north of Sweden, which is itself a firm rebuke to the idea that Sweden was ever a monoracial country — warns that growing calls for a truth and reconciliation process with Sweden’s indigenous population will force the country to reckon with race.

“Sweden has never dealt adequately with [its entrenched racism] against the Sami people” — they were among the “inferior races” studied at the Uppsala institute — “or with facts including that up until 1974 Sami women were being forcibly sterilized simply for being Sami. We would like to see this properly addressed so we can all move on,” she said.

It’s hard to imagine that such an extended public conversation would be possible if one were unable to use the word “race.” It’s as if a crusty, dead, white hand from the past continues to grip the country by the jaw. Yet as living refugees move west and north across Europe, this conversation is already underway, whether mainstream Sweden likes it or not.

Emma Hartley is a a freelance journalist and the author of a book about European history and politics, “Did David Hasselhoff End the Cold War?” (Icon Books, 2007)

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Andy

You wrote: “By comparison, the same survey put the Social Democrats, who have been in government since 1917, at 23 percent, and the Moderates at 21 percent.” This is not true. The Social Democrats have been an opposition party in 1928-1932, 1976-1982, 1991-1994 and 2006-2014.

Posted on 9/30/15 | 8:51 AM CET

jax

Andy: you are right.
And the journalist has not done her home work when it comes to other things. E.g the credibility of Irene Molina who made career on making extraordinary but untrue claims. According to Swedish records, zero sterilizations where done due to race. They were made for a number of reason e.g. mental illness and anti social behaviour.
For those of you who read Swedish:http://www.gp.se/nyheter/ledare/gastkronikor/1.2845068-dan-korn-med-bluffen-som-vapen

Posted on 9/30/15 | 9:48 AM CET

paleocon666

This article sucks. Of course Romanian beggars are organized. And of course we want to get rid of them and return them to their living space: Romania.

Posted on 9/30/15 | 12:19 PM CET

ExLiberal

“On January, 1, 2011 Sweden abolished the word “race” from its legal lexicon,”
Censoring words is exactly what the National Socialists did in Germany.
Socialists hate free speech.

Posted on 9/30/15 | 12:50 PM CET

Fredrik Forsberg

The fact that the word race was removed from legislation is true, but the word ethnicity is used throghout swedish legislation on discrimination.
The two are not identical, but that is a more subtle difference than, as the article suggests, omitting race as a factor entierly.

Posted on 9/30/15 | 1:26 PM CET

Fixpir

So, Mrs Hartley, if I read correctly your article :
1) The SD has posted an announcement in the tunnelbana “sorry for the beggars”, not saying anything about who the beggars are and if begging was or not supervised by organized crime.
2)Following you conclusion, Roma begging is not supervised by organized crime.
3)Ergo, SD is a racist organization, because of what they did NOT say or write.

Hum ! Isn’t that what is called “thought crime” ?

Concerning begging, I travelled to Sweden in the past from France. We found the cost of living to be very high. For example, we restricted ourselves on some food items. Of course, my wife and my four children immediately went begging as a direct consequence. Wait … Maybe I don’t remember correctly …

Posted on 9/30/15 | 2:23 PM CET

Fixpir

From the article : So how is it possible that the SD’s racist narrative, whose only foundation is hearsay
Actually, if we simply read your article, what is hearsay is the racist narrative in the first place. You interpreted a very limited placard in the metro, and come here to explain that what is NOT written is only hearsay and therefore racist.
Maybe SD has a racist narrative, actually. But, frankly, I am absolutely not convinced by somebody who lie about the message to get her point.

Posted on 9/30/15 | 2:31 PM CET

Fixpir

Mrs Hartley, I am not sure to understand the question about the Saami at the end.
My understanding of your logic is the following :
– Although there is no concrete writing or saying to prove it , the SD is racist because you claim so.
– Sweden has removed the concept of race from its legal system. Which seems logical, considering that neither you nor I nor, probably, any reader, think that race is a valid concept. (Let’s state : the vast majority of readers”).
– But Sweden was racist in the past (actually considering “evidence” that seems to be questioned by Swedish readers in this comment section, by the way).
– so your conclusion is that the Swedish law should continue to use an invalid concept.

Frankly, your logic is questionable. Either the concept of race is valid, either it is not. If it is not, I do not understand what law you can base on it.

On a more general understanding, I see in your article the mixing of totally unrelated matters. The only relation I see is the guilt feeling that the Swedes should feel, following what I understand of your position, simply for being Swedes. Frankly, I am personally fed up of this guilt feeling that people try to instil in our societies in all of the European countries.

Posted on 9/30/15 | 2:53 PM CET

Fixpir

@exliberalCensoring words is exactly what the National Socialists did in Germany.
Actually, the question is not about censoring the word in Sweden. But if one agrees with the fact that the concept of race is mistaken or non existent, then it is highly logical to remove any law or text based on this concept. Which is different of word censoring.
As far as I know, this concept has been removed from the French legal system some years ago, too.

Posted on 9/30/15 | 2:59 PM CET

Gough

The writer’s credibility took a nosedive when she mixed up the use of “Roma” and “Romania”. “Roma” are often known in English as Gypsies, and they live in dozens of European countries. They speak a language only distantly related to other Indo-European tongues. “Romanians”, on the other hand, mostly live in Romania. They speak a language closely related to Italian. So what would be the point of deporting the Roma people to Romania?

Posted on 10/1/15 | 4:11 AM CET

Indigenous Swede

Claiming Samis are the indigenous people of Sweden is racist towards Swedes, as it is Swedes who are in fact the indigenous people.
Those who would become Swedes came to Scandinavia 10.000 years ago when the edge of the ice moved north. The Samis came in many thousands of years later from the north east.

Posted on 10/16/15 | 12:39 AM CET

jubus

Race exists and only pseudo-scientific idiots might say the opposite. And Swedish scientists from Uppsala Univercity gave the evidence that racism is a part of human’s mentality. One cannot be non-racist, it is a part of our mind. Instead of “elimitating” part of our own psyche, we should rather focus how to deal with it.
Creation of multi-racial, multi-ethinic, multi-religious society without the acceptance of indigenous people, have ended in sending indigenous Amerindians to nearly concentration camps. First, America, now Europe.
We should stop the immigration from other continents or prepare for racial war on our own land, similar to the one, seen in post apartheid South Africa or colonial Americas.